Are killers all suppose to be equal?
In a balanced game I mean? Without powers they have slightly varying TR and speed but that's it right? I saw something about that at the bottom of the screen while a match was loading one time.
We as people create "tiers" of killers and it seems that the highest rated currency for power is mobility, i.e. nurse, billy, spirit, hag.
For instance, when you play as the cannibal there is this note along the bottom of the load screen that says either "the cannibal can use the chainsaw to destroy pallets quickly" or "use the chainsaw on groups of survivors to devastating effect".
I read something like that and I wonder if the devs play their own game? If you slow down for even a second on a pallet loop to start revving up, no survivor is going to drop the pallet, they just loop you again. I bet if you time from start of rev until you can shred a pallet its the same as just breaking it given the animation and everything.
And groups of survivors, besides camping a hook I can count on one hand the number of times I have gotten more than one survivor "out in the wild" at the same time.
I guess my TLDR is this: the killer powers are cool and supposed to add flavor. On paper they all sound pretty impressive. How they actually play out in the game, however, creates a vast gulf in the strength of those actual powers.
Comments
-
I think they should all be playable.
I have yet to see any lind if game where characters have different abilities where they arent tiered, from this to fighting games, etc. I think they should focus on fixing m1 killers as opposed to ne killers temporarily but you really can get 4k with anyone if you're decent. Rank notwithstanding.
0 -
I don't think they are meant to be equal at all. Playable, yes, but just as "good" or easy to be, I say no. The developers themselves even list a skill level next to each killer where, it seems to me, the "hard" killers have the/are supposed to have the best payoff if you can master them. Obviously there are exceptions to that pattern (cough cough Billy). But i think some killers are designed to be less..... effective.... than others. As far as whether or not this is intentional, idk. The developers have said they don't design each new killer to be top tier (i believe that was around the time the Plague had just come out lol) but who knows.
TLDR; You're right. They aren't designed to all be "equal." That results in what is sometimes a flawed idea when only the "good" killers are viable and get played but we still get less effective, creative powers.
0 -
I think they are all designed to be viable against brown and green ranks. But that's it.
0 -
Ideally, I think all killers should be mid-tier and then buffed so that they could all be A tier. So, the really strong ones need adjustments to make them like everyone else and the really weak ones need adjustments to make them like everyone else. It's supposed to be just different types of game styles to create variation, I would think.
0 -
I would assume they're INTENDED to be equally viable, yes.
Obviously, they're not even close, but...hey, Freddy rework. At least they're addressing anything. Though I blame the base gameplay mechanics over any individual Killer's limitations.
0 -
Having a few Killers that aren't as good as the rest at mid to high ranks can be a good thing actually, for example having those Killers general means that A: You can have a low skill power and B: It's a great way to show a new player what weaknesses are important to cover when developing a strategy.
However these Killers must be the minority or else you have a big problem.
The trapper is a good example of this. He:
A: Is very simple and straight forward to use
B: Isn't very good. But when you are playing him it is very easy to see exactly why he is not good and in a way that can be applied to other Killers
C: Has an equivalent Killer who covers his design space while also being actually good (hag)
Other than something like that you want to make everyone as close as possible to create balance.
1 -
It's impossible to make all killers perform equally as well on each map.
Huntress will be awful in maps that don't have many open spaces, for instance. Pig/Myers/Ghostface will be awful on maps that are too open and lack alternate surprise routes.
That being said, Killer "power" is primarily based on their effectiveness in causing/forcing survivors to misplay (ergo Spirit does that quite well) and secondarily based on their ability to reduce the time spent between hooking survivors (something Trapper sucks quite badly at because his setup takes too long, and his chases can last too long).
Nurse breaks this formula because she ignores game mechanics. Fatigue is Nurse's only real inhibiting factor. Nurse changes the game into being based on the killer's ability to not make misplays, rather than the inverse.
0 -
@TheGreatDave Sure some the killers that have “hard” beside their name are truly hard to master like Spirit and Nurse who are easily the top two killers, but Myers and Doctor also have “hard” beside their name and they are NOWHERE near as strong as Spirit and Nurse. Hag and Huntress (Huntress should honestly be “hard”) have “intermediate” and Billy has “easy”.
I look at their difficulty to play on how long it will take to learn to use their power effectively. Only Nurse, Spirit, and Huntress take quite a while to learn properly. Hag is clearly superior to Myers and Doctor but her difficulty is lower. I have no idea why Myers and especially Doctor are labeled as “hard” when I believe their powers are pretty straight forward.
Does Ghostface also have “hard”? I haven’t really payed that much attention to him.
0 -
Devs came right and said not all killers are meant to be viable at high ranks, so no.
1 -
Yes, Ghostface is labeled as "hard"
0 -
If you look at all killers without their powers then stat wise they are more similar than different. When you take powers into account they are vastly different. Even killers who deal in the highly prized mobility realm vary wildly in viability. Spirit, Nurse, Billy, Wraith, and Legion all deal in high mobility, but three of them are viable in red ranks while two of them are not. One of them, Legion, is one of the worst killers in the game in terms of consistency and viability.
What you can take from that is killers in general aren't meant to be equal. Now killers due share a pool of universal actions that have the same effects no matter who does them. For instances Lunge attacks and Basic attacks are all the same timing and length for every killer. Every killer opens lockers, breaks palettes, and kicks gens at the same speed. So in that way they are equal, but that is more for the sake of less overall behind the scenes work they or the game engine needs to do.
0
